The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

her each time the court moved across the kingdom, bringing with her boxes and bottles and pots and carefully wrapped seedlings. Everywhere she went she collected herbs and recipes for medicines, talking to the local wise women, scouring the hills and the heaths, the forests and fields for different ingredients, always learning, always consulting the ancient gods and the leechbooks and the books of the apothecaries and the monks, always listening to her own instincts and above all to the plants themselves. Her eyes darted towards the queen and then away again. Eadburh had grown harder and more bitter as the months progressed since her latest miscarriage. Nesta had hoped this child would go to term – there was every sign that all was well – but then it happened, the result of shock and fury had torn the child’s frail life force asunder. She could guess the effect on Eadburh of walking in on her husband and his latest friend. She must have known this was his way, but even so, whatever had happened in the king’s chamber had unseated not just the child, but Eadburh’s mind.

‘Well?’ Eadburh’s voice would brook no argument.

Nesta had seen the woman who followed the queen. She had invited her into their lives. She could not pretend she did not know to whom the queen was referring.

‘Where does she come from? What is she?’

Nesta put down her stitching and stood up. ‘She does not mean you harm.’

‘So, you can see her?’

‘I have watched over you for a long time, lady, and if I thought her a danger, I would have warned you. She is part of the strange pattern of Wyrd. She is a restless soul, come from another time.’

‘I want her gone. She is a spy.’

‘She only wants—’

‘I don’t care what she wants! I want her gone. You will banish her. You will bind her with charms and you will send her to the deepest vaults of Hell.’

‘And you do not think to ask the bishop to perform such a ceremony for you?’

‘No. I am asking you.’ Eadburh froze. ‘Is she here now? I can’t always see her, but I feel her gaze on me.’

Nesta nodded. ‘She is here.’

Bea felt herself gripped with panic. There was a buzzing in her ears. ‘Wake up!’ she muttered. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up! This is a dream. I am not there. I am here. At home. I do not want this!’ She squeezed her eyes shut in her dream then opened them again. She was still there, hovering near the beech hedge in a sunny garden, half hidden from the two women, but still close enough to hear them talking.

‘Make her go away!’ Eadburh’s voice had risen hysterically.

Nesta dropped her stitching into the basket at her feet and stepped towards the hedge.

‘No, no, no!’ Bea tried to retreat. She couldn’t move. Nesta took several steps towards her and raised her hand and Bea felt the power from it like a bolt of electricity. She was paralysed. She couldn’t breathe.

Bea woke with a start, her heart pounding, no longer in the sunny garden but back at home in the dark snug in the quiet Cathedral Close.

Staggering to her feet, she turned on the table lamp and glanced up at the picture of Jesus. He was looking particularly serene. ‘I’m going to need your help with this one,’ she whispered.

25

In the cottage on Offa’s Ridge, Emma woke suddenly and lay staring up towards the darkened ceiling. Her heart was beating hard and her face was wet with tears. She listened, expecting to hear her father or Felix snoring, but there was nothing, only an almost tangible silence as though somewhere someone else was listening as intently as she was.

Their mother had rung last night, and it had been agreed that, instead of going back to London just before Easter, they could, if they both promised to revise hard, spend the rest of the holidays up here with their dad. Val would pick them up a couple of days before they were due back at school. Her alacrity at getting rid of them for a few more days had been laughable really, but her poor mother didn’t have much of a life. Emma’s thoughts strayed to her parents’ relationship. Dad was either at home but working all hours of day and night and completely abstracted, or away doing research in some remote library or other, or on one of these writing breaks, while her mother was neither one thing nor the other. She couldn’t go off and forge a new life for herself, but she couldn’t really be happy with such a fogey either. Their marriage was rubbish really, Emma conceded to herself. Why were they still together? She pondered this for a while. She had always assumed they loved each other and presumably at some level they still did. She would have to discuss it with Felix. Not that he would be any use. He never saw anything unless it was pointed out to him, preferably on a screen.

She sat up, her arms wrapped round her knees. This holiday had certainly been different. They had both been dreading it, wondering if they could possibly get out of it, but their mother had insisted. They would get some fresh air, she had pointed out. Well, they were getting that all right. She shivered as a draught stirred the curtains in the little bedroom. What with an ancient manuscript in a lost manor house, secret ciphers hidden in vellum pages, ghosts and people who actually lived in a cathedral, this was up there with the adventure stories she used to love so much when she was a child. And on top of that she had found someone who could help her with her night terrors and her weird visions. She hadn’t mentioned it to Bea, but she had once tried to explain to their family doctor what happened. The man had heard her out,